AQUÍ Mis pasos en esta calle Resuenan En otra calle Donde Oigo mis pasos Pasar en esta calle Donde Sólo es real la niebla. Octavio Paz – March 31, 1914…
My mind has been drawn to another of Rilke’s poems – Dreaming: This my labour: crowned by desire to wander the paths of days. Then sturdied, strong, send rootlet streamers…
Du bist der Arme, du der Mittellose Du bist der Arme, du der Mittellose, du bist der Stein, der keine Stätte hat, du bist der fortgeworfene Leprose, der mit der…
Blak and Black is saddened to hear of the passing of Yindjibarndi Elder Mr Ned Mayaringbungu Cheedy at the age of 105. Mr Cheedy was custodian of the Yindjibarndi stories…
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought of golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would…
"Upon my feeble knee, I beg this boon, with tears, not lightly shed" of my regular readers for my tardiness in posting over the last few weeks. I have been…
While travelling the highways and byways of Queensland taking statements in support of my application to the United Nations alleging ongoing and systematic human rights violations against Australia’s Aboriginal and…
You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be – usually are – on the whole generous and right; but it has no foundation for them; you may…
On August 30 last year Blak and Black lodged a petition on the GoPetition website calling for a Royal Commission into the Australian Federal Police (“AFP”). Blak and Black has…
The Samoan Government has announced that Australian Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, will visit the country next week as part of a Pacific tour that also includes Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Solomon…
This post has been proferred by Imogen, a reader of Blak and Black. When the members of the First Fleet stepped off their cruise ships and on to Australian soil back in…
The more classically minded among Blak and Black’s readers will recognise the title of this post as being the opening words of Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid, "... sing of…
We like to think that we are now living in an enlightened era where racism is a thing of the past. While things have gotten better for minority groups in the United…
Complicity takes many forms, as discussed in posts by both Bakchos and me. Many believe that silent complicity is the least culpable, but to my mind if the silence enables…
The criminal justice system consists of three main parts: (1) Legislative (create laws); (2) adjudication (courts); and (3) corrections (prisons, probation, parole, fines, community service). In a criminal justice system,…
Yesterday, Thursday I received a phone call from Captain Fred Martens, the man who spent a 1,000 days in jail, having been wrongly convicted of an offence under Australia’s Child…
For some years now I have been considering the concept of complicity. What constitutes complicity, how far does it extend, where does responsibility for wrongdoing cease? You can all blame…
This case arises from the petitioners’ claim that Azzam Rahim was detained, tortured, and killed by “the security forces of the Palestinian Authority” in late 1995, around the time the…
Captain Fred Martens, whom I have written extensively about on Blak and Black in the past, was employed as a commercial pilot flying light aircraft within PNG and between PNG…
Crimes against humanity, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions -- all of those human rights norms are defined by actions. They're not defined by whether the perpetrator is a human…